Author: Meng Yan's Blockchain Thoughts

After Trump returned to the White House, his series of statements and actions in the field of encryption have attracted widespread attention. As the relationship gradually becomes increasingly implemented, a contour including crypto asset reserves, stablecoins, RWA (real world assets) and new ICOs is gradually emerging. Logically, it not only serves Trump's geostrategic goal of "revitalizing the United States", but also quietly builds a future financial infrastructure that is deeply integrated with AI technology. However, due to Trump's various unconventional behaviors, his new encryption policy has also caused a lot of controversy and even ridicule. In order to understand this topic more clearly, I invited Dr. Shao Qing, who has lived in the United States for a long time and has been following the crypto digital asset industry for a long time, to have a conversation, discussing the logic of Trump's new cryptocurrency policy, and to discuss its possible variables and other reactions under the background of the AI ​​revolution.

TL;DR: The original intention of Trump's new cryptocurrency policy is to provide billions of people around the world with a new channel to "subscribe to the United States", that is, to use US dollar stablecoins to purchase on-chain US assets, thereby hedging the threat posed by the hollowing out of the US industry and high debt to the international status of the US dollar, and to win time for US dollar hegemony and the revival of US industry. But this truly unpredictable variable is the fusion of the integration of encryption technology and AI. Tens of billions or even trillions of agents use blockchain to schedule and collaborate resources, which will comprehensively change all aspects of human economy, military and life, and promote the world to accelerate towards the technological singularity.

1. Win time for the US dollar

Meng: We are beginning to see some specific signs that the Trump team is systematically advancing a new crypto framework. You are in the United States, and how are the relevant industries in the United States responding to this matter?

Shao: Indeed, since mid-2024, Trump and his team have shown an image of reform and innovation in the field of crypto. During the election period, from public speaking to donation acceptance, to supporting specific projects, and even personally distributing meme coins, which surprised most people. After being elected, a digital asset working group, including almost all important department decision makers, was established as soon as possible, and vowed to launch a new regulatory framework for the crypto industry within 180 days, making the United States the "world's crypto capital." Then in the past two months, we have made every step forward and promoted relevant implementation in a solid manner. Recently, it announced Bitcoin reserves and crypto asset storage, and held the first White House crypto summit. In the past, most technological innovations were led by enterprises, but in the crypto industry, there is now a clear situation in the United States where the president himself personally led the way and enterprises followed behind. According to my opinion, the high-tech industry in the United States is generally mentally prepared for this situation, butIt is only now that I have begun to seriously consider and deal with it. Financing related to stablecoin payments and real-world assets (RWA) has been rapidly heating up recently, but overall it is still in its early stages.

Meng: Trump's own governing style is unpredictable. He and his family have done a lot of extraordinary things around crypto assets. Coupled with some seemingly subversive operations in other fields, many people believe that Trump is also "making trouble" in the crypto industry, just to make money for his own family. After you sorted it out just now, it is obvious that this shallow view is self-defeating. At least in the field of encryption, Trapp's actions are coherent. How do you view the dominant logic behind these measures?

Shao: My point of view is not only in the crypto industry. In fact, Trump's current administration is completely different from the last time. He has very clear goals and strategies. His unpredictability and subversiveness are actually to destroy the existing system and reduce resistance for him to implement reform measures. You might as well go to the Heritage Foundation website to download Project 2025’s white paper, and you will know it at first reading. His new cryptocurrency policy is in line with his overall strategy, so this series of actions may seem outrageous, but if you put them in a larger strategic framework, you will find that they are not isolated operations, but constitute a complete and internal logical deployment. The core goal is to use crypto infrastructure to reshape the global accessibility and investability of the US dollar, support the international status of the US dollar, and thus win time for the return of US manufacturing and capital repricing.

Meng: Can you specifically disassemble the so-called "complete deployment" path structure?

Shao: I summarize it into five consecutive steps, nested with each other and linked together. The first step is to loosen public opinion and concept. Trump did not directly revise the law, but broke the "flood" psychological constraints on crypto assets during the Biden period, through words, postures, signals, and even the extraordinary actions of himself and his family, and established a new narrative framework of "encryption = innovation", which allowed the Republicans and traditional conservatives to gradually accept the crypto industry as part of their strategic resources.

The second step is to establish US digital asset reserves, including federally established Bitcoin reserves and crypto asset storage, as well as some Republican-controlled states that openly hold Bitcoin and openly talk about the reserve role of mainstream assets such as Ethereum. The implicit meaning of this behavior is that at the US level, or at least part of it, is incorporating crypto assets into the preset scope of "strategic financial assets", thereby enhancing the consensus of crypto assets.grade.

The third step is to establish the stablecoin regulatory framework. This is the center of the entire plan, because only under a compliant US dollar stablecoin system can the digital dollar become a settlement and issuance medium for global asset investment with the help of the decentralization and global reach of blockchain. And this is why Coinbase and Circle interact frequently with Republicans at the level.

The fourth step is to carry real-world assets (RWA) on the chain. Including US Treasury bonds, stocks of large American companies, corporate bonds, real estate mortgages and other high-liquidability or securitable assets. This move can migrate the behavior of "investment in the United States" from bank accounts to blockchain and from capital markets to on-chain DeFi system.

The final step is to launch a "new regulatory ICO" mechanism. This is not simply a replica of the 2017 frenzy, but a way to restore the legitimacy of "on-chain fundraising" to release the on-chain risk capital supply capacity, so that it can serve the reconstruction of the US industrial financing, especially the manufacturing chain.

Meng: It sounds like this is a layer-by-layer package, but does it really have a strategic logical closed loop? There has been a long-standing tension between crypto assets and the hegemony of the US dollar. How did this relationship be restructured in Trump's version of the new cryptocurrency policy?

Shao: Your question hits the nail on the head. Mainstream crypto narratives emphasize decentralization, de-dollarization, and cross-border circulation, while the US dollar strategy has long been based on control over the clearing system, bank supervision and the degree of openness of capital accounts. There is indeed structural tension between them. But Trump's way of trying to reconcile this tension is to "absorb rather than confrontation": instead of suppressing financial innovation on the chain, he tries to convert it into a new infrastructure serving the dollar.

The core of this idea is that the US dollar does not have to be spread through a bank account, it can also be spread through the chain, as long as its units are still anchored to the US dollar standard. In other words, as long as global investors use US dollar stablecoins on the chain and invest in US RWA, the United States is still charging "sindividual tax" and mastering pricing power.

First, through on-chain stablecoins + on-chain assets, the United States can even avoid increasingly strong compliance and geopolitical frictions in the traditional financial system and achieve "de-friction" of finance. This is an extension of geofinancial powerTechnique.

Meng: So is this model really attractive? What do you think of its potential impact on economies outside the United States?

Shao: We must realize that the ultimate goal of this path is not internal industrial reconstruction itself, but to attract overseas capital to "subscribe to the United States" in an on-chain manner. Simply put, it is to let global investors hold digital wallets and buy on-chain treasury bonds, corporate stocks, startup equity and other asset tokens denominated in US dollars, thereby completing the "re-anchoring" of the US dollar in the Web3 era.

The attractiveness of this model lies in the fact that it lowers the threshold for global capital to enter the US market in a digitally native way. The impact of this is that it challenges other sovereign currency areas to control capital inflows and outflows. If emerging market capital begins to bypass the banking system and directly enter the US on-chain asset market through wallets, this kind of "financial Ant Moving" capital transfer will weaken the effectiveness of local finance.

In the long run, the United States may use this to rebuild a "financial network center" status and become the end point of issuance, settlement and liquidation on the global asset chain. Any economy that poses a potential challenge to the dollar's status must seriously consider the competitive pressure and governance spillover brought by this path.

2. Reshaping the ICO mechanism and the US innovative financing structure

Shao: Among the five steps proposed above, what I am most unsure about is the so-called "new ICO". It seems to be the most controversial and breakthrough part of this new cryptocurrency policy. Is it really possible to implement it in reality? How will it support technological and industrial innovation? I know you have invested a lot of time in researching this issue. Do you have any conclusions?

Meng: This issue is more sensitive in the Chinese field, but when it comes to facts, the matter itself is very clear. Including the United States, the core dilemma in global innovation financing mechanisms is becoming increasingly prominent. In the past twenty years, the financing of high-tech entrepreneurship in the United States has mainly relied on three channels: one is the Silicon Valley venture capital system, the second is the Nasdaq IPO, and the third is various scientific research grants and innovation incentive programs. But these three have their own limitations: VCs are gradually concentrating on later projects, and early financing bottlenecks are becoming increasingly serious; the IPO threshold is too high, and many technical projects are eliminated if they are not mature; while incentives are often inefficient and have a long cycle.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering) once provided a brief financing equalityTest. It allows projects to finance directly to global investors and end users of projects through issuing tokens, without relying on traditional financial intermediaries. However, due to lack of supervision and frequent abuse, this mechanism was almost sentenced to death after 2018.

A key member of Trump's crypto team is SEC commissioner Hester Pierce, who is the proposer of the "Crypto Haven" program. She has been working to restore some kind of legitimacy to ICOs by creating a new regulatory framework. It is not a return to the original wild growth state, but a "new ICO" system based on "transparency + approval + disclosure". The core is:

- Token issuance must be anchored to actual products, assets or cash flow to avoid the flooding of void tokens;

- Issuers must register with the SEC or CFTC, but enjoy relaxed light compliance treatment;

- Projects can raise funds on-chain for qualified investors or overseas users, bypassing the traditional secondary market issuance process;

- Issuance revenue must be used for local technology, manufacturing, and infrastructure projects in the United States to cooperate with Trump's "reindustrialization" main line.

This institutional design is actually closer to the combination of "regulatory version of Kickstarter + digital bond + de-mediated issuance", and is an attempt to reconstruct the US risk financing technology stack.

Shao: It sounds like, once this mechanism is established, it will not only benefit the crypto industry, but also the entire US industrial financing system may be reshaped?

Meng: That's what it means. If on-chain financing and on-chain asset issuance can be institutionally included in the compliance path, the cycle of "innovation-financing-circulation" will be significantly shortened. More importantly, this mechanism is naturally more suitable for cutting-edge industries such as Web3, AI, and energy technology. They are characterized by high early capital demand, high threshold for understanding of traditional investors, and mismatch between financing rhythm and cycle. On-chain fundraising + stablecoin settlement + global liquidity will greatly release the financing capabilities of medium and long-tail projects.

End of the end, this will also enable "register in the United States + issuance in US dollar stablecoins + raise from global investorsCapital” has become a new paradigm, thereby further consolidating the United States’ dominance in the trinity of technology, capital and narrative. In turn, facing the logic of “consolidating the status of the dollar” you just mentioned, it seems that in this way, the American high-tech industry and the American innovation system have also evolved into the support base of the dollar, and through the atomization and decentralization of the circulation of the dollar, other geographical opponents’ intervention and ability in this process are weakened.

Shao: What you are talking about may not be the end, but the end may be the demise of all securities markets, including today’s digital asset exchanges.

Meng: Technically speaking, it does point to the situation you are talking about.

3. Challenge: Institutional internal friction and compliance rigidity

left;">Meng: Overall, I think this new policy is logically self-consistent in theory and has a high degree of strategic calculation. But back to reality, is it really possible to succeed? Where is the resistance? What do you think about this after living in the United States for a long time?

Shao: This is a key issue. Any implementation depends on whether the conditions in the three aspects of system and technology are mature. As for Trump's new encryption policy, its biggest challenge lies in the multiple constraints of "institutional inertia", "regulatory infighting" and "compliance and rigidity".

We can specifically dismantle the risks as follows:

First of all, the current regulatory system in the United States itself is fragmented. SEC and CFTC The regulatory boundary dispute over digital assets has been long-standing, and they each have different opinions on "what is securities and what is commodity". Without strong intervention at the presidential level, this internal friction in the system is difficult to break.

Secondly, crypto assets still have cognitive divisions between the two parties in the United States. Although the Republicans are more friendly to crypto, the Democratic camp still retains a very high vigilance, especially the Senate Financial Committee and the White House Economic Advisory Committee that "crypto is equal to financial instability." This means that even if Trump is re-elected, it is not easy to promote relevant legislation at the congressional level.

Thirdly, there is still a gap in the maturity of technology and financial infrastructure. On-chain RWA, stablecoin global clearing network, and compliant wallet system are all being promoted, but there has not yet been a sovereign platform that can carry large-scale financial activities. The existing on-chain financial ecosystem (DeFi) does not have institutional stability.

In other words, if the Trump team wants to promote stablecoins, RWA and new ICOs To legalize, a "on-chain auditable and accountable" compliance infrastructure must be built at the same time. This is not only a technical challenge, but also a governance challenge. Once it is implemented out of control, any case of "on-chain USD participating in terrorist financing" may lead to fierce opposition and even failure of the entire new policy.

In addition, the conflicts from the traditional financial industry cannot be ignored. Large banks and financial service institutions are extremely sensitive to "de-mediated USD reissue". They will worry that their own settlement, custody, KYC and other businesses will be weakened. This vested interest resistance at the industry level will form an ununderstood resistance in the process of advancement.

Finally, and most fundamentally, global trust in the US dollar is not infinitely sustainable. Even if the United States has built a perfect on-chain financial narrative, if it continues to polarize in stability, debt governance, and diplomacy, external investors may still choose to wait and see.

Meng: It seems that this success or failure depends highly on whether Trump can achieve "maximization of coordination capabilities"? He has now entered the White House for the second time and formed a highly integrated executive team. It is indeed possible to promote the basic formation of this framework within two years. But this requires the President, the Ministry of Finance, the Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Reserve System (Fed), and the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to form an unconventional collaboration state, which was extremely rare in the past.

Shao: From a more realistic perspective, I think the possibility of this new policy being fully implemented is no more than 50%, but the possibility of partial implementation and gradually forming market expectations and strategic inertia is more than 70%. That is to say, even if the complete legal system is not formed in the end, as long as there are enough capital, institutions, and developers starting to bet on this direction, the United States has completed the re-adsorption of global resources of crypto finance.

4. Passive response and strategic choice of other economies

Meng: It seems that we all agree that the medium-term goal of this new policy is to use the on-chain US dollar to reconstruct the global asset investment path. For major economies outside the United States, this is actually a further challenge to financial sovereignty. How do you think they will respond?

Shao: This response is likely to be "passive start and active defense." At present, whether it is the European Union, or regional powers such as Japan and South Korea, their understanding of Trump's new policy is still in its early stages. There are three main reasons: First, there is still uncertainty about whether this strategy will continue when Trump first returned to the White House; second, on-chain finance is still regarded as a "technical outlier" or "risk assets" by many; third, stablecoins, RWA and on-chain financing are still vague in most fiat currency regulatory systems. But if the United States uses on-chain US dollars, on-chain assets and new ICOs to form an open financial platform, which will "attract global investors to the chain to buy US bonds, invest in US stocks, and raise US dollars", then other capital control capabilities, monetary regulation capabilities, and even industrial financial dominance will be challenged.

We can see it separately.

Talk first.

For the sake of Trump's new encryption policy, Trump's cryptocurrency policy may bring pressure on three levels. First, the internationalization process of RMB is further under pressure. Currently, the cross-border use of RMB mainly relies on the dominant trade settlement framework and offshore clearing network. Once the US dollar mechanism on chain is formed, it will erode the marginal space of the RMB with "technology-induced convenience", especially in regions such as the "Belt and Road", the Middle East, Latin America, etc.

Second, the number of technical bypass channels for capital control will increase. Once stablecoins and on-chain U.S. bonds have obtained clear compliant identities, it will become a reality for individuals and businesses to access US dollar assets through unofficial wallets and agreements. This will create a structural challenge to the existing cross-border financial regulatory system.

Third, the sovereignty of the industrial chain financing may be passively migrated. If high-tech enterprises start to raise funds on the chain, whether they register a shell company in the United States or issue RWA, it will be difficult to grasp the rhythm and whereabouts of these financing behaviors.

Of course, the reaction will not be absent. I expect to deal with it from two lines in the future:

First is to strengthen the central bank's digital currency (e-CNY) and cross-border payments, build a "compliant RMB on-chain financial system" to form an alternative solution with controllable supervision;

Second is to block the local transmission path of the US dollar on the chain from a system, including restricting wallets and on-chain assets to the market, and strengthening anti-money laundering and fund source requirements.

Meng: How will the EU react? They seem to be more open in the field of encryption?

Meng: Left;">Shao: The EU's idea is indeed more technically neutral, but it also faces structural passiveness. MICA (European Crypto Assets Market Act) is trying to establish a unified regulatory framework, which provides a compliance path for on-chain assets and stablecoins. But the problem is that the euro does not have the attractiveness of global financial-dominated currencies. It lacks anchoring assets, global clearing networks and risk tolerance. Therefore, even if Europe encourages on-chain finance, it is likely to become a circulation channel for US dollar stablecoins rather than an ecological center for euro stablecoins.

If Trump's new policy is smooth, the EU faces only two strategic choices: one is to participate in and rely on the on-chain dollar system dominated by the United States to preserve the role of local technologies and institutions in on-chain finance; the other is to strengthen the ECB's regulatory leadership over crypto assets and create a "controlled compliance + The combination of local currency first attempts to give the euro independent sovereignty on the chain. No matter which path is chosen, the EU's passivity is doomed. The real variable is "how to lose less", not "whether it is doomed." Meng: I think the first thing countries around the world may have to overcome is a numbness at the moment. Over the past decade, many have promoted several rounds of attempts around encryption technology, and the results are generally not ideal. Therefore, most of Trump's new policy seems to be still waiting and watching, and perhaps also taking a fluke mentality, that is, to see if Tessel is bluffing or just trying it out. But from the logic you described, Tessel's new policy is an important part of its overall strategic goal, so we should give up doubts about its determination and start thinking about it instead. Consequences and response strategies.

5. AI + Crypto may cause accidents

Shao: We have discussed the logic and impact of Trump's new encryption policy from multiple dimensions such as finance, regulation, and international structure. But I always feel that there is a greater technical backgroundThe scenery has not been fully mentioned, that is AI.

Meng: You are right. Trump's new encryption policy did not occur during the slowdown of technological evolution, but was proposed against the backdrop of accelerated breakthroughs in AI, structural reconstruction of technology stacks, and global technological and economic torrents.

We must recognize that the interaction between AI and encryption is unleashing a new systemic possibility: on-chain identity, on-chain assets, on-chain payments, combined with large-scale self-driven AI Agents, are rewriting the “borders of organizations” and “structure of transactions.”

I remember a few years ago, after carefully studying the characteristics of blockchain technology, Mr. Zhu Jiaming once put forward a conjecture, that is, historically, blockchain and encryption technologies may not be used for people, but for AI. But we could not visualize this conjecture at that time. Now with the rapid advancement of AI, this picture has become clearer and clearer.

The most intuitive example is that many AI agents can have cryptographic wallets, execute contract logic, and complete cross-platform, cross-language, and cross-business system task collaboration through on-chain protocols without human intervention. They may represent individuals, businesses, and even autonomous organizations, conduct asset allocation, resource coordination and information governance globally.

From this perspective, Trump's new encryption policy may be just a strategic attempt to re-anchore the US dollar globally, but in practice, unexpected chemical reactions are likely to occur, paving the way for the "on-chain infrastructure map" in the AI ​​era. Stablecoins, RWA, and new ICOs are essentially transforming US dollars, US assets, and US innovation capabilities into digital resource units that can be called by AI. The on-chain clearing and settlement mechanism builds a permissionless value collaboration layer for these AI systems.

Shao: I want to take a step forward. From the perspective of real-life applications, the combination of AI and encryption technology is not as easy to find closed testing scenarios as autonomous driving. Autonomous driving can be tested on closed roads and limited cities, but the essence of the encryption system as a value transfer and collaboration protocol determines that it requires a real open network environment to verify its effectiveness, so it has been difficult to "rehearse" on a large scale so far. This is one of the main reasons why most token economic experiments failed in the past decade.

But perhaps, we can enter from another perspective: the "model within the enterprise"scheming market mechanism. That is to say, in large organizations or factory internal management systems, especially the "internal settlement mechanism" in ERP systems, it may become the "test field" of encryption systems.

Imagine that a highly intelligent and unmanned manufacturing factory has increasingly been decided by AI. At this time, if programmable payment and settlement logic is introduced to allow machines to price and pay resources through stablecoins, a "in-machine economy" can be simulated. This is not only the natural landing point of encryption, but also brings an operating mechanism for AI that does not need to rely on human account systems.

In other words, the "digital factory" will become encryption technology and AI The ideal experimental field for combining. This is a typical machine world with the characteristics of closed structure, highly automated participants, and highly auditable behaviors. It is expected to be the first to realize a "endogenous financial order": machines exchange values ​​in machines, and algorithms use contractual methods to constrain resource allocation. This will not only reconstruct the boundaries of "human-machine collaboration", but also may give birth to a new paradigm of enterprise governance based on on-chain identity and circulation.

From this perspective, the “revitalization of manufacturing in the United States” we mentioned earlier in the article is actually worthy of redefinition. The traditional sense of “manufacturing return” focuses on factory locations, industrial chain layouts and employment opportunities, but the future “manufacturing” may be the combination of “computer-driven automation capacity” and “digital intelligent systems”. The manufacturing advantages pursued by the United States will not only be the reconstruction of the physical industry, but also the leading governance model based on digital twin systems.

And encryption technology is the underlying protocol choice for the financial order part of the “digital twin strategy”. In the initial stage, it was indeed the data that serves intelligent manufacturing can be verified, processes can be traced, and transactions can be cleared; but with the integration of AI, it gradually evolved into the clearing and settlement core in the full-link autonomous system. This is a larger proposition than intelligent manufacturing, and it is The problem of recreating digital order at the level.

Meng: Once this trend is launched, it will significantly reduce the collaboration friction across the entire network, so that innovation no longer depends on organizational structure or legal subjects, but is based on the real-time combination logic of "Agent + contract + data".

What is more worthy of deep imagination is the new economic order built after the deep integration of AI and encryption technology. Today, the collaboration, knowledge sharing and resource allocation between AI are still highly dependent on human preset paths and traditional branchesPayment infrastructure, such as credit card settlement, API authorization, account system, etc. These methods naturally have organizational boundaries, flow friction and settlement delays. But in the future, when AI Agents have their own wallets, can execute smart contracts on the chain, and make real-time payments through digital assets, they will coordinate tasks and allocate resources to each other without human intervention, forming a truly "inter-machine market". This mechanism will allow billions or even trillions of agents to spontaneously form an orderly economic collaboration network without central scheduling. This automated collaboration that transcends all organizational boundaries and codes is rules will not only greatly release the productivity potential between agents, but will also give birth to a new form of industrial division of labor, on-chain governance and social structure. In a sense, it indicates that we are entering a new machine-dominated economy, with complexity, creativity and even risk of out-of-control far exceeding any existing system today.

In other words, we may be on the verge of a system-level innovation emergence—a critical structure that may lead to a technological singularity is forming. Trump may not fully understand the deep logic of this technological evolution, but his may be the first to promote an experiment in rewriting the underlying rules worldwide. These may not be fully implemented, but have triggered a re-evaluation of global financial technology and architecture. In the next few years, we will see more economies being forced to respond to themselves.